Chocolate Raspberry Cupcakes with Raspberry Butter Cream

Today dear friends I am sharing a recipe for the most delicious chocolate raspberry cupcakes with a raspberry butter cream frosting that is simply out of this world!

Chocolate raspberry cupcakes! Oh my!

So those who have been reading my blog will know that I adore baking. It’s my favorite thing to do in the kitchen. I love licking the batter from bowls. I love the smell of delicious goodies and breads coming out of the oven. I love breaking off a piece of cake or muffin or bread when it’s a little too hot, just because I have to try it. And of course I love the results. Seriously, what’s not to love about baking?

Yum!

It’s also something that comes pretty naturally to me, for some reason. I do having baking disasters, but not nearly as often as I have other kinds of kitchen mishaps. Now that I’ve said that, I have to confess that the first time I made these I forgot to add the key ingredient for gluten-free baking: xanthan gum. My cupcakes were a delicious, but totally crumbly mess. Instead of crying over crumbly cupcakes I put the crumbs in a bag and stored them in the freezer, knowing that they will be just the thing for cake truffles sometime in the future.

The frosting is amazing!

Now, while the cupcakes are really yum, I have to take a moment to rave about the frosting. If you’re a fan of Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero you probably own their book, Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. If not, you might want to run out and grab it, because not only does it have great recipes, it has a whole bunch of useful tips about how to make perfect cupcakes every time. In it, they share their recipe for raspberry butter cream and talk about the experimenting it took to get the perfect amount of raspberry flavor. In the end, they use an Italian soda flavoring. Dare I say it, but I think my frosting recipe is *that* much better. The raspberry flavor is mind-blowingly intense, it’s a beautiful bright pink, and there is no sugary syrup anywhere in sight. The secret ingredient? Freeze-dried raspberries.

So without any more ado, here is the cupcake recipe you should be making this weekend…